Player Services Status Update 9/6/2012
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2012-09-06 23:38 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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To be fair, all they did was make it Free 2 play for *everyone* and not just the former subscribers (queue grumblings of a crappy refer a friend trial method, which was the *only* method to trial the game)
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Originally Posted by Creole Ned
What's funny is they re-enabled access to all former subscribers for Tabula Rasa when it was getting shut down.
Tabula Rasa. |
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Same here. I really wanted to log in and save all my characters' info, particularly bios. As it is I can only save a few. Quite annoying.
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Originally Posted by Windy_Babe
Though when I found out about the closure, I immediately tried to purchase a VIP account and points, so I could have full access to everything one last time. (And the costumes....oh the costumes, how I love them so.) But the store was closed already...on August 31st mind you, the day of the announcement.
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I'm sure there is a techno reason why they cant. Hell, Zwill said something about trying to get effective VIP for all in his coffee chat of 9/5. At a guess, I'd say it's NOT as easy as being able to do a global database lookup and say "Assign Status.VIP.COX == .True." Might have even required a client rebuild and push in some way, and that is something the Whip hands assigned to oversee the shut down have said "bleep" no to. We have what we have, and that is all we have until the efforst to have our beloved game picked up by a company that won't treat us the way NC Soft has have succeeded. Or they fail and on 1 Dec we go on with a tear in our eye but resolute in the knowlege that we did not give up; we never surrendered.
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This is most likely incorrect. There is probably no current capability to 'flip a switch' and make everyone VIP. Therefore, someone at NCSoft would have to code a routine to do this, or start flagging maybe 100,000 accounts manually. So there would actually be a cost in terms of employee time spent.
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Originally Posted by Windy_Babe
What does it cost to give everyone VIP access? Zero.
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
I too have to express my dissatisfaction. Whilst I have not put as much money or time into the game as others, I still have several years of paid subscription along with other purchases here and there (City of Villains, Going Rogue). I took the last few months off from VIP status due to limited funds (summer has been a slow time of the year for me) and was looking at re-upping my subscription by October at the latest (Trick O Treating and Haunted House!).
Now there are characters I will never be able to look at again. I have 2 global unlocks left, but easily a dozen different characters... it's going to be torture deciding which two character I want to unlock. Do I unlock some of my oldest toons for one last spin around the city, or the newer characters I barely got to know? Maybe my Level 30 Praetorian, whom will otherwise never know the joys of Primal Earth?
I'd like to know *why* we can't get VIP status. From what I can tell, it's simply further evidence of how little NCSoft cares about its customer base. Is it a technical issue? If so, why not spare a little manpower to resolve the issue for the good of the customers.
Sadly I feel like I know the answer to that already... we're not important enough obviously for them to justify any expenditure of resources on. We're just cattle... livestock.
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I keep seeing this and I keep doubting it. I used a serial key after the store shut down to turn back on my VIP status. It was automated and damn near instantaneous. I logged out of the game, logged into plaync, applied the code, logged back into the game, VIP flagged.|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
This is most likely incorrect. There is probably no current capability to 'flip a switch' and make everyone VIP. Therefore, someone at NCSoft would have to code a routine to do this, or start flagging maybe 100,000 accounts manually. So there would actually be a cost in terms of employee time spent.
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This leads me to believe that VIP status us nothing more than a flag on the account. A flag that could be tripped to on for all accounts by anyone with access to the account database.
I think it far more likely that the reason for not doing it is tied to the belief that the servers would be flooded by trolls and gold farmers raising hell for the hell of it. Granted, that probably wouldn't happen to a large enough degree that any of us would care, but that's my thought.
Be well, people of CoH.
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I still have some old trial keycodes kicking around somewhere... I wonder how the system will handle them?
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
I keep seeing this and I keep doubting it. I used a serial key after the store shut down to turn back on my VIP status. It was automated and damn near instantaneous. I logged out of the game, logged into plaync, applied the code, logged back into the game, VIP flagged.
This leads me to believe that VIP status us nothing more than a flag on the account. A flag that could be tripped to on for all accounts by anyone with access to the account database. I think it far more likely that the reason for not doing it is tied to the belief that the servers would be flooded by trolls and gold farmers raising hell for the hell of it. Granted, that probably wouldn't happen to a large enough degree that any of us would care, but that's my thought. |
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My guess would be that it wouldn't take them for anything but new accounts.|
Originally Posted by LordAethar
I still have some old trial keycodes kicking around somewhere... I wonder how the system will handle them?
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http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...city+of+heroes
Cheap upgrades found there if you don't already have them all.
Be well, people of CoH.
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I remember using a Trial code on my CoX account when it was unsubbed at one point...
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
My guess would be that it wouldn't take them for anything but new accounts.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...city+of+heroes Cheap upgrades found there if you don't already have them all. |
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Awesome! Try it out, folks.
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Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
I remember using a Trial code on my CoX account when it was unsubbed at one point...
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Be well, people of CoH.
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It'll be a couple hours before I can check - I'm still at my shop waiting on some computers to finish their thing.... then I need to actually find those codes. I think I know where they're at *if* I didn't go and throw them away when I was spring-cleaning this earlier this year.|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Awesome! Try it out, folks.
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Assuming all goes well, I'll post my findings. It probably won't work, but I really have nothing to loose.
QR: Of course, if you started your game account *with* a trial account, then it wont work.
But there is of course no harm in trying it now.... shame i cannot use another trial code on my account 
I just tried using the serial code from a retail Architect Edition box on my account and got the following message:
This serial code has expired.
I'm not buying the "technical limitation" bit either. If they can turn on everyone who's account has expired since the 1st then they can turn on everyone who already has an account.
And if the concern is a flood of people the solution is to only turn on currently-existing accounts and not any new ones.
No, the reason they did this is the same as to why they're only giving point refunds to those who purchased after the 24th, they simply do not give a ****. They are doing the absolute bare minimum required of them, most likely only to avoid potential legal ramifications; certainly not cause they care.
NCsoft has now landed a coveted spot on my gaming company shitlist. Other than whatever small % cut they get from money I spend on GW2 they're never going to see another dime from me. Ever. They join EA, Activision, Capcom, Ubisoft, Blizzard, SOE, CD Projekt RED, PWE, and Cryptic on a rapidly-growing list of gaming companies that seem to think it's ok to **** over their customers, and that somehow we're going to thank them for the priviledge by continuing to give them our hard-earned money. Sorry, but no.
Yeah, now I'm PISSED.
Found my trial codes, but as I feared, they didn't work. "This serial code has expired."
Le sigh... it was worth a try.
What's funny is they re-enabled access to all former subscribers for Tabula Rasa when it was getting shut down.
Tabula Rasa.